4 comments:

It reminded me that a certain loathsome columnist on whom DG has a mental database going back to The Flood wrote on this very subject back in 2014, except he had an imaginary half-a-billion because eight figures is never enough. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/david-brooks-there-are-social-and-political-benefits-to-having-friends.html?_r=0

The man apparently hasn’t had a good friend (surprise!) since summer camp and thinks the rest of us are as bad at making friends as he is. But instead of volunteering or joining a gym or inviting workmates out for a drink or all the other free or near-free ways the rest of us find and keep friends, he has to spend big bucks to recreate this lost part of his childhood.

I hope the group he spends two weeks with meets in rural Minnesota and includes Al Franken.

[P.S. Erik Prince is Betsy DeVos’ brother, not her brother-in-law.][P.P.S. Trump is now talking military option in Venezuela...he wants to bomb something, anything to prove Russia is a witch hunt.]

Nothing nihilistic about Cicciolina - she could mug it up to a lusty chorus of cheers but her positions parsed clean as a whistle in generic progressive territory, last seen founding the Democracy, Nature and Love Party (DNA) in 2012.

Trump's glorious EO scribbling ritual has a real civic action level circa 16% from what I hear some wonks on the Interwebs say, so he may be even less politically potent than he seems on paper ... & his Senate is already cultivating a habit of casually ignoring him at will, as is a growing fraction of the Pentagon.

GOP FUBAR? Yeah, eight years of opposition using one-word policy can kinda grab ya by the boo-boo, can't it?

The Derp Reich facing down a cold dark shadow made of no-knock warrants?Them what pimped it gimped it.

I guess it really comes down to whether you actually want to go through what it takes to make things better, a set of well known steps that can be both agonizingly slow and unbelievably difficult, and are never a sure thing, or just want to jerk off to your own perceived superiority. I'm getting too damn old for that second option. Thanks again for the breath of fresh air that is your podcast, it really does help prop up my sanity when there is literally blood running in the streets.

"so much of moving left is waiting for the previous generation to die off" How I wish you would highlight more often that so many of the barriers to progress in the USA are based in the juggernaut of the babyboom generation. It seems to be so much of the subtext that dare not speak its name when discussing political action and the inactions. Polls will mention incomes, race, but seldom birthdates. I remember that immediately after the Brexit fiasco, polls showed a direct correlation between age and likelihood to vote out of the EU. We know that Fox news appeals to the geriatrics, halfdeaf, and those too poor to move from the cornbelt to Boca Raton. That's the half of the GOP who belive that Trump won the popular vote so why can we not say so openly? We've witnessed the babyboom demographic alter US politcs since the rise of Ronald Reagan with its apogee at the generational id matchup between Clinton vs. Trump. We've seen the complete ineffectiveness of the GOP to run a candidate from their own ranks and yet the Dems can hardly claim to be much better. My main concern is that the leadership of both parties are not ready for what the younger generation of voters want. I grew up post Reagan, being reminded day after day that nice things were too expensive for me to expect. The internet has bypassed such messaging and the Gen Y and X are now in numbers to push back against this selfserving nihilsim.